Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful to Mim, Fong, and Cake. They make me my coffee every day when I’m at school.
5th May 2021 – The coffee shop (Wynn) didn’t even have great coffee. Teachers were not allowed to leave school during work hours but this shop is just the other side of the road outside school. It would take 5 minutes to walk there, buy a coffee and walk back which I would do two or three times a day. At the end of the contract they cited this as the main reason that I wouldn’t be rehired. Needless to say, they had a high turnover of foreign teachers. There’s a real tug-of-war between Thai administrations and foreign teachers. To me, the Thai request for foreign teachers to assimilate to the Thai way seems to indicate that theirs is the best way, but even I, as a non-professional teacher, could see that it wasn’t the best way, and having come from another country (to use as a comparison) and wanting to do the best job possible for the students – it seems inevitable that not many foreign teachers are happy under this system – unless they just take the easy way out. Why don’t I take the easy way out? It’s just not in me. I take the path of most resistance. It seems like the system of education here is purposely designed to keep people stupid. Achievements from Thai institutions are meaningless overseas because they know the situation here. Anyway, talking to the three girls in the coffee shop – even just inane chatter – became my 5 minutes of daily bliss whilst working at this particular government school.
1994ever 